what's Agave?
Agave is a decentralized, non-custodial liquidity protocol operating as a money market on the Gnosis Chain. It enables users to earn interest on deposits and borrow assets against collateral, functioning similarly to established lending platforms through smart contract automation. The protocol supports various assets for supplying liquidity and borrowing, with dynamic interest rates determined by supply-demand dynamics. Risk management includes liquidation mechanisms and collateral factors to maintain protocol solvency, all governed in a permissionless manner.
Agave released v3.1.7 Mainnet-Beta Upgrade Candidate Jan 23, 2026, seeking 10% validator adoption.
Requires minimum version v3.1.0 to support SIMD-0185 Vote Account V4 feature live on testnet at epoch 910.
Released v3.1.8 as the recommended validator software for Mainnet-beta, with conditional upgrade criteria including stake delinquency thresholds and monitoring requirements.
Requires at least version v3.1.0 to support SIMD-0317 (enforcing 32 data + 32 coding shreds) live on testnet at epoch 892.
Agave develops Alpenglow as part of optimization efforts to close performance gap with Firedancer client.
Agave v3.0.12 is now recommended for Mainnet-Beta validators who have less than 5% stake delinquency and can actively monitor their nodes.
Agave will implement new transaction processing behavior that drops transactions selling SOL or SOL LSTs or going short rather than demoting write locks, aligning with Firedancer TPUs.
Agave v3.0.11 is now recommended for Mainnet-Beta validators who have less than 5% stake delinquency and can actively monitor their nodes.
SIMD-0083 protocol upgrade activates on testnet at epoch 873, removing the constraint that entries cannot contain conflicting transactions and requiring validators to run at least Agave v2.3.0 and FD v0.709.30000.
SIMD-0186 protocol upgrade activates on devnet at epoch 978, calculating loaded transaction data size and requiring validators to run at least Agave/Jito v2.3.0 and FD v0.709.30000.
Feature gate to disable the turbine fanout experiment activates on mainnet-beta at epoch 880, requiring validators to run at least Agave v2.2.8 and FD v0.708.20306.
SIMD-0306 protocol upgrade activates on mainnet-beta as of epoch 878, raising the per account compute unit limit to 40% of block capacity and requiring minimum Agave/Jito v3.0.0.
Development tools anchor and metaplex crates do not yet support Agave v3.0.x despite nodes being required to run this version for months.
Figment's main Solana validator migrated to Frankendancer, Jump's hybrid validator client that combines Firedancer with Agave code. Early data shows consistently higher rewards due to denser blocks and stronger MEV capture with stable latency.
Agave v3.0.10 reaches recommended status for Mainnet-Beta validators with upgrade requirements of less than 5% delinquent stake and active monitoring capability.
Agave is listed among projects where a user experienced hacks or rug pulls, indicating a past security incident.
Version 3.0 adoption reaches 75%+ of stake, with feature-flag activations set to trigger at ~95% network adoption causing potential node forks and SDK 2.x functionality breaks.
Protocol announces resumption of feature gate activations next week, setting v3.0.0 as mandatory minimum version with non-compliant nodes forking off the network. Validators must upgrade when delinquent stake is less than 5%.
Agave v3.0.8 reaches recommended status for Mainnet-Beta validators, requiring less than 5% delinquent stake and active monitoring for upgrade.
Agave v3.0.7 release reaches recommended status for Mainnet-Beta validators, requiring less than 5% delinquent stake and active monitoring for upgrade.
Version 3.0.6 advances to general recommendation status for Mainnet-Beta validators with Firedancer 0.712.30006 as alternative, requiring less than 5% delinquent stake for upgrade.
Validators requested to upgrade to v3.0.6 with target of 25% mainnet-beta stake adoption under specific monitoring conditions.
Protocol reduces $aUSD redemption fees by 90%, lowering costs from 0.5% to 0.05%.
Protocol's stake program removed, affecting existing staking functionality.
Version 2.3 introduces performance optimizations including faster epochs, improved AccountsDB, and new TPU client.
Integration with Jito Labs increases block capacity by ~20%, while suggesting exclusive transaction routing to Jito validators.
Technical architecture overhaul introduces Scheduler Bindings, improving core performance and enabling safer custom scheduler development.
Mandatory validator software upgrade to v2.1.21 required by epoch 787; non-compliant validators will lose Foundation stake.
Team launched protocol with disabled consensus mechanism, creating credibility concerns for current governance advice.